THE
LAST WORD Water isn’t just a landscape feature, it was and still is big business. Specifically, the Spring Valley Water Company was a behemoth, sculpting much of the west side with its flumes, pipelines, pumping stations, and reservoirs. The company even held enough sway to finagle a school named after it. The images we have on OpenSFHistory from the company’s archive show San Francisco literally springing to life from empty fields and forested hills – landscapes that are almost unimaginable today. Almost. Utilitarian images intended to serve as project records, it feels like the beauty and power of these photographs went overlooked in their own time. Perhaps not unlike the way we take water for granted today.
View north of pipeline construction on 6th Avenue between Irving and Judah, April 20, 1926. (SFPUC - Spring Valley Water collection; courtesy of a Private Collector / wnp36.10028)
View north, from about current Brotherhood Way, of Lake Merced and the Lakmer Pump Station, June 9, 1904. (SFPUC - Spring Valley Water collection; courtesy of a Private Collector / wnp36.10129)
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